In Richmond, high number of homicides go unsolved

On the one year anniversary of the shooting death of her daughter Ronique Gardner-Williams, Nicole Gardner, her husband, Maurice, and children, Nicholas, 8, and Amauriana, 2, and others hold a candlelight vigil.

On the one year anniversary of the shooting death of her daughter...

More than a year after her daughter was killed in a drive-by shooting, Nicole Gardner still refers to her death as “the accident.” To an extent, it was. Richmond police do not believe that Ronique Gardner-Williams was the intended target, just an innocent, random victim.

Gardner-Williams, a 20-year-old College of Marin student, was in the passenger seat of a friend’s car texting on her phone when a gunman pulled up and opened fire, spraying bullets into the road. Several vehicles were hit, according to police, but she was the only casualty.

“She didn’t have time to duck, no time to run, nothing,” said Gardner, 45, who had relocated her children from Boston to Mill Valley eight years ago after a shooting permanently disabled one of her sons. “I moved away from everything I knew to come here and be safe, and then this happened to my daughter.”

The brazen December 2015 shooting unfolded in daylight on a busy intersection near Hilltop Mall, and investigators believe the young man driving the car carrying Gardner-Williams may have been the intended target. They interviewed him but gained little information and police still have not identified a suspect.

The unsolved killing is not unusual in the East Bay city of 110,000 residents. Once considered one of the nation’s most dangerous cities, Richmond has made strides in recent years to decrease violent crime and improve community relations. But suspects were arrested and charged in fewer than 1 in 3 homicides from 2011 through 2016, a Chronicle examination of federal and local police data shows, even as the number of homicides has experienced a long-term decline.

Richmond police, according to state Department of Justice data, cleared just 28 percent of 90 homicides from 2011 through 2015, one of the worst clearance rates among California cities that averaged 10 or more homicides annually. A homicide is considered cleared when an arrest is made and a criminal complaint is filed, or when a suspect is identified but cannot be detained.

Richmond police dispute that figure, saying a technical error in 2015 caused the state to misreport their crime data. But city police records obtained by The Chronicle show that from 2011 through 2016, roughly 40 percent of the 119 homicides in Richmond were cleared, a rate still well below national, statewide and Contra Costa County averages for that period.

The failure to arrest and charge a high proportion of homicide suspects occurred even as the number of killings in the city fell from a recent high of 47 in 2009 to 24 last year, including one later determined to have occurred in El Cerrito, according to police records. And while a sexual misconduct scandal recently rocked several Bay Area police forces, leading to the firings of three Richmond officers, community-police relations generally have grown stronger — something many experts consider key to solving crime.

Mayor Tom Butt noted, too, that Richmond spends more per capita on public safety than many surrounding cities, including Oakland, El Cerrito, Berkeley, Hayward, Albany and Vallejo.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the national law enforcement think tank Police Executive Research Forum, said a department’s clearance rate can be swayed by many factors, including financial and technical resources, the types of homicides commonly committed in a city, and how quickly detectives can get to the scene of a slaying.

But some say there is more Richmond can and should do to arrest homicide suspects, including investing more resources into investigations and forging stronger ties in parts of the city most affected by gun violence.

Nicole Gardner-Lewis speaks during a memorial vigil on December 3, 2016, the one year anniversary of the shooting death of Ronique Gardner-Williams, at the site of Ronique's murder in Richmond, Calif.

Media: Scott Strazzante

The consequences of having so many unsolved homicides can be far-reaching. Along with delaying closure for parents such as Gardner, they can diminish trust in law enforcement and prompt a cycle of violence, with one killing leading to another.

“Most of our gun violence in Richmond is retaliatory, people not trusting the police to solve the issue so they take it into their own hands,” said Tamisha Walker, a longtime violence prevention activist in Richmond. “If I only had to deal with solving one homicide at a time, I could be more effective than if I have one homicide that turns into three, all because the violence wasn’t interrupted in time.”

Carol Ferguson Jones, whose organization advocates for the families of homicide victims in the East Bay and helps pay for funeral costs, said that when killers aren’t caught, the pain she sees in victims’ families is much more pronounced.

“It’s well known,” she said of Richmond’s relatively low homicide arrest rate. “It’s sad when you sit there and you take families down to the district attorney’s office and they have no information. Do I have to make the flyers for you? Do we have to march in the streets of Richmond? They want to know, ‘Who killed my son, my grandson, my child?’”

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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Nicole Gardner frequently wears a collage of her slain daughter, Ronique, around her neck.

Nicole Gardner frequently wears a collage of her slain daughter, Ronique, around her neck.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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Ronique Gardner-Williams’ brother, Nicholas, 8, hugs a teddy bear that he received shortly before his sister was shot and killed in a currently unsolved murder.

Ronique Gardner-Williams’ brother, Nicholas, 8, hugs a teddy bear that he received shortly before his sister was shot and killed in a currently unsolved murder.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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Nicholas Gardner-Lewis waits to blow out the candles during his 10th birthday party.

Nicholas Gardner-Lewis waits to blow out the candles during his 10th birthday party.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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Nicole Gardner walks with her children Nicholas, 8, and Amauriana, 2, at the Creole United Festival in San Rafael.

Nicole Gardner walks with her children Nicholas, 8, and Amauriana, 2, at the Creole United Festival in San Rafael.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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Nicole Gardner laughs as her daughter, Amauriana, 2, jumps in a puddle.

Nicole Gardner laughs as her daughter, Amauriana, 2, jumps in a puddle.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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As her daughter, Amauriana, 2, plays outside, Nicole Gardner, looks to the sky and talks about her oldest daughter, Ronique Gardner-Williams.

As her daughter, Amauriana, 2, plays outside, Nicole Gardner, looks to the sky and talks about her oldest daughter, Ronique Gardner-Williams.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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While taking a break from preparing Thanksgiving meals for senior citizens in Marin City in memory of her slain daughter, Ronique, Nicole Gardner keeps an eye on her children.

While taking a break from preparing Thanksgiving meals for senior citizens in Marin City in memory of her slain daughter, Ronique, Nicole Gardner keeps an eye on her children.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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Amauriana Gardner-Lewis, 2, tries to see what her mother, Nicole, is doing in the kitchen.

Amauriana Gardner-Lewis, 2, tries to see what her mother, Nicole, is doing in the kitchen.

So far this year, Richmond has recorded four homicides, including the killing of Rashanda Franklin, 29, who was shot to death in her car in front of her two young sons Tuesday morning. Her former boyfriend, Lawyer Dushan McBride, 43, was detained for the crime Wednesday in Sacramento, and arrests have been made in two of the other homicide cases, according to police.

But as of January, just eight of Richmond’s 24 homicides in 2016 had ended with an arrest and criminal complaint. Police have suspects in mind for eight of the other cases, said Lt. Michael Booker, who leads the department’s major crimes and homicide unit.

City officials cite several reasons for why so few homicide cases make it to court. Police Chief Allwyn Brown points to Richmond’s high number of gang-related shootings, which he says are difficult to have prosecuted because key witnesses are often reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement and physical evidence can be sparse.

“We may know how the crime occurred, what type of weapon was used, have a suspect identified, but we don’t have corroborating evidence, so that case won’t be filed,” Booker said. “If you’re looking at the hierarchy of crime, homicides are the pinnacle, the top of the heap, so we will exhaust all resources to get that case to the D.A. But when you don’t have a lot of leads or information to go on, you might hit a wall in an investigation.”

Some experts said the Police Department’s structure may play a role in the low clearance rate. The 182-member force has no cold-case unit investigating older killings, something that has proved effective for clearing cases in other cities. And the city’s four homicide detectives are tasked with solving other violent felonies as well. Three robbery investigators and two sergeants often assist with homicide cases, too, Booker said.

Michigan State University criminologist and former police Officer David Carter said that given the number of slayings in Richmond, the department might benefit from creating a unit dedicated solely to investigating killings.

“You can increase clearances by changing your homicide investigation practices, and at the foundation of that is the caseload,” Carter said. “If they are (also) handling crimes against persons, that’s too much.”

A high number of unsolved homicides signals to the community and to criminals that even the most serious offenses can go unpunished, said Thomas Hargrove, whose Murder Accountability Project in Washington, D.C., analyzes federal crime data to bring attention to unsolved slayings.

Hargrove said his research shows that a person is twice as likely to be killed in a city that is underperforming in clearing homicides, partially because those who kill once are more likely to kill again or to become the next victim themselves.

“If you leave a killer on the street, everyone in the community is going to know,” Hargrove said. “And what’s the message? Killers aren’t being caught.”

According to police records, 29 percent of the 119 homicides in Richmond from 2011 through 2016 ended with someone being arrested and charged with the crime. About 11 percent were “exceptionally” cleared, which most often means that the suspect had either died or it was determined that the crime was committed in self-defense.

While the majority of those homicides were investigated by Richmond police, some were handled by outside agencies — including a recent string of freeway shootings that were primarily investigated by the California Highway Patrol.

State Department of Justice data show that more than 60 percent of homicides in the rest of Contra Costa County and the state were cleared from 2011 through 2015. Richmond is somewhat unique in that it is a relatively small city with a high amount of violent crime, but some California cities with similar per-capita homicide rates also cleared a higher ratio of slayings.

In San Bernardino, police cleared 63 percent of the 209 homicides from 2011 through 2015, according to state data. In Bakersfield, more than 70 percent of the 115 homicides were cleared. And Vallejo police cleared a higher proportion of homicides than Richmond, even as the city was climbing out of bankruptcy.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Mayor Butt acknowledged that Richmond’s relatively low homicide clearance rate was not his top priority, though according to budget documents, improving the city’s clearance rate to more than 50 percent has been a “key objective” for police since at least 2011. He said that preventing homicides in the first place and reducing the city’s crime rate are more important goals than getting homicide cases prosecuted.

“There’s a culture here in Richmond of people killing each other over really stupid things, like being on the wrong side of town,” Butt said. “Some of these are old feuds — somebody’s uncle killed somebody from three decades ago.”

Many of the city’s problems, the mayor said, can be traced to its economic woes. The city has consistently had one of the lowest median family incomes in the Bay Area, to the point where there’s hardly enough money to run the city, he said.

According to an independent review of Richmond’s finances last April, increases in city expenditures are outpacing revenue, raising concerns about a growing deficit.

That has meant that even violence-prevention programs credited with reducing crime have seen their funding drop in recent years. Cuts also brought the number of sworn officers down by about 7 percent between 2013 and 2016, from 196 to 182.

Chief Brown said if he had more resources, he would put them toward nonenforcement, non-investigative roles, staffing more positions to engage directly with the community and help prevent homicides and gun violence.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

While taking a walk, Nicole Gardner-Lewis and her children, Nicholas, 8, and Amauriana, 2, stop to play in a trampoline at Terra Patio in Mill Valley, Calif., on Wednesday, November 16, 2016. Gardner'sdaughter, Ronique Gardner-Williams, was shot and killed in a drive by shooting in Richmond on December 3. 2015.

While taking a walk, Nicole Gardner-Lewis and her children,...

“We would like to prevent future cases from happening, and that really requires an investment in young people,” he said. “You have to look at the pathway a young person travels before they even have an intersection with law enforcement and become a teenage serial shooter.”

Many law enforcement experts consider community-police relations the most important factor in clearing homicides, and Richmond police have been lauded for strengthening ties with residents. During a visit there in September 2015, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the agency had become a model for how law enforcement should interact with the community.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

Before heading to school, Nicholas Gardner-Lewis, 8, makes breakfast.

Before heading to school, Nicholas Gardner-Lewis, 8, makes breakfast.

But in parts of town plagued by gun violence, distrust of police is still strong, said DeVone Boggan, director of Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety, which tries to redirect people most at risk of committing or becoming victims of gun violence.

A male in Richmond between the ages of 15 and 30 has a 1 in 250 chance of being slain, and nearly all victims are African American or Latino, according to city data.

While Boggan said that the Police Department cannot solely be faulted for the city’s low clearance rate, each time a shooting or homicide is not solved confidence in law enforcement erodes further.

“The communities most impacted find themselves feeling that police don’t care — if they did, they would have arrested someone,” he said. “When you have youngsters suspected of shooting a gun saying, ‘I have a 60 percent chance of getting away with my own justice,’ that’s scary.”

About two years ago, the district attorney’s office began holding quarterly meetings with law enforcement agencies in West Contra Costa County — including Richmond — to brainstorm how to close pending homicide cases and reduce violent crime.

The county’s top homicide prosecutor, Derek Butts, said that despite the gains Richmond police have made, it is still hard to get valuable information in gang-related shootings.

“You don’t want to be a snitch. ... You want to take revenge,” Butts said. “That’s their code. You’re not a man if you tell the police. You’re a man if you do something in retaliation.”

Butts pointed to the number of witnesses, and even victims, he has had to impeach for falsely testifying or hold in contempt of court for not showing up at all.

“You can blend in in Richmond having done these things,” he said. “And people accept it.”

The experience of another California city shows that a turnaround in homicide clearances is possible, even for departments that, like Richmond’s, face challenges including gang violence, a high homicide rate and a lack of resources.

In 1993, Orange County’s most populous city, Santa Ana, had one of the lowest clearance rates in the state at 28 percent. The city’s Police Department was strapped for cash and had a low officer-to-resident ratio at a time when gang violence was increasing and homicides were on the rise.

Former Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters found creative ways to address the problem. He stretched the department’s budget, using asset forfeiture — typically in the form of cash seized from suspected drug dealers — to buy new equipment for detectives. And he started a reward program funded by an anonymous donor that offered payment for information on homicides.

Walters also created a special unit that focused solely on gang-related homicides, hired retired detectives to work cold cases, and traded an investigator position for a firearms examiner, which allowed police to get ballistics information on guns used in killings much more quickly.

The homicide clearance rate steadily improved, and by 2009, it topped 100 percent: Detectives had solved not only every current homicide, but those from previous years as well.

Walters said making the improvements required obtaining every grant, federal partnership, technology and reward program he could get his hands on.

“You don’t give the crooks any quarter,” he said. “You’re going to go to the end of the Earth to catch them and bring them to justice. We didn’t care how long it took.”

Hargrove, the Murder Accountability Project researcher, said that elected officials in cities with low clearance rates often need to throw their weight behind the issue of unsolved killings before any progress can be made.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

Nicole Gardner cries in the kitchen of her residence in Mill Valley.

Nicole Gardner cries in the kitchen of her residence in Mill Valley.

“It comes down to political will,” he said, “and the failure of political will helps to generate more murders.”

Mayor Butt disagreed, saying his city does a “remarkable job” given its limited resources.

“There are a lot of subtleties to this,” he said. “It’s not just statistics of this city has a high clearance rate and that’s good and this one has a low one and that’s bad. You’ve got to look at the nuances.”

Nicole Gardner vividly remembers the day her daughter died. It was a rainy morning in early December. The two had been on the phone planning for Christmas.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

Until she can afford to place her remains in a mausoleum, Nicole Gardner is keeping the ashes of her slain daughter, Ronique Gardner-Williams, in her residence in Mill Valley.

Until she can afford to place her remains in a mausoleum, Nicole...

An hour later, Gardner’s stepdaughter called her to say that Ronique had been shot in Richmond.

Thinking her daughter was only injured, Gardner texted and called her phone over and over, then drove from her home in Mill Valley across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to try to find her. She checked the local hospitals, then went to the Richmond Civic Center looking for a police station.

As she frantically searched for an officer, a community worker approached her. “Are you here about the young lady that just got killed on the highway?” the man asked, referring to the busy intersection of Hilltop Drive and San Pablo.

She knew immediately he meant Ronique.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

On the first year anniversary of the shooting death of her daughter, Nicole Gardner, her husband, Maurice, and children, Nicholas, 8, and Amauriana, 2, and others are overcome with emotion during a candlelight vigil.

On the first year anniversary of the shooting death of her...

Gardner drove to the shooting scene near Hilltop Mall, still cordoned off by police tape. An officer confirmed her worst fear: Her daughter had been in a car with two friends when someone in another vehicle opened fire. The Redwood High graduate, a math whiz who wanted to be a veterinarian, died almost immediately.

Detectives interviewed some witnesses but found few leads, said Lt. Booker, who goes to the scene of every homicide in the city. Shell casings were analyzed at the Contra Costa County crime lab, but the results were inconclusive, in part because they had been run over by other cars.

Gardner soon started her own investigation — scouring social media, talking to her daughter’s friends, hunting for anyone who might know who was responsible for the shooting.

Police discourage civilians from getting involved in investigations, and Gardner knows she’s taking a risk. “Sometimes I can hear Ronique in the back of my head, saying, ‘Mom, please stop, don’t worry, I’m OK,’” she said. “But me, personally, I can’t stop. I need to know who did this.”

On the anniversary of the shooting, Gardner and a dozen friends and family members gathered at the scene of the shooting to erect a memorial. The group lit candles, laid purple and white flowers on the sidewalk, and asked God to help bring the perpetrator to justice.

All these months later, Gardner said she is still in shock.

“I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it,” she said. “I go to sleep, I wake up and I feel like I’m dreaming. ... But I’m awake, and I know my daughter is not here.”